


You’d never have to see me again

by supersymmetry



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (or really more like a post-graduation au?), Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Summer Camp AU, a lot of talking like...too much, ecology teacher Newt and astronomy teacher Hermann, ft. Head Counselor Stacker, smoking cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 22:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersymmetry/pseuds/supersymmetry
Summary: Being the ecology teacher at science camp for the past few years have been the highlight of each summer. But this July’s end can’t come soon enough.All because of fellow camp counselor-slash-cabinmate-slash-astronomy teacher-slash-attractive enigma-slash-mortal enemy Hermann Gottlieb.





	You’d never have to see me again

Just after sunset, the faint glow of fireflies have started to emerge along the tree line across the lake. Newt sits down at the end of the dock, takes off his flip flops, and lets his feet dangle in the welcome cool of the water. Being the ecology teacher at science camp for the past few years have been the highlight of each summer. But this July’s end can’t come soon enough.

All because of fellow camp counselor-slash-cabinmate-slash-astronomy teacher-slash-attractive enigma-slash-mortal enemy Hermann Gottlieb.

This was Hermann’s first summer at this camp. He was intelligent in the way that left you in awe, funny in the way where you’d only catch it if you were really listening, handsome in the way that was severe until he smiled. It took a lot of prodding, but over the course of the first week, Newt uncovered that Hermann would be starting his PhD in math at Boston University in the fall, just across the river from Newt’s own alma matter of MIT. Which was appealing, until Newt discovered that Hermann was the most frustrating person to walk the earth.

From his arbitrary principles on sleep and social conduct to—a more recent development—his late night excursions, in which he’d exit their shared cabin about an hour after lights out, only to return an hour later smelling like lavender. (Newt once made the mistake of commenting that lavender soap would attract bees. Hermann didn’t speak to him for the rest of the week.)

The more Newt interacted with Hermann, the worse it seemed to get. Newt trying to make conversation, Hermann snapping at him for _literally no possible reason_, then Newt firing back because _of course_ he’s not just gonna take an attack lying down. All culminating this evening’s verbal spar about _who knows what_ it was originally about, but it led to shouting in front of the campers, which in turn lead to Stacker seeing them in his office and giving them a severe chewing out. Hermann left as soon as Stacker was finished, an hour or so ago.

Newt raises one foot out of the lake, watching the water drip off. A modest breeze cuts through the summer humidity, gently drying his foot. He returns it to the lake, and soaks in the quiet hum of the evening.

The old wood of the dock creaks. Newt turns around to see Hermann standing a few meters back, just in time to catch him conspicuously hiding something behind his back. “What are you doing out here?” Hermann demands from afar.

“‘Hi’ to you, too, dude.” Newt puts on a mock penitent voice. “Or, I’m sorry, is this _your_ spot for brooding? Should I _leave_?”

Hermann rolls his eyes. “No,” he says simply, tucking whatever he was holding behind his back into his jean pocket before crossing his arms. “And I don’t _brood_.”

“You’re missing out, this is some prime brooding real estate.” Newt shrugs. When no further sounds of motion happen, Newt continues, "It’s pretty nice out tonight." He lightly kicks the lake’s surface, as if it demonstrated his point.

At that, the dock creaks once more, along with the sound of light, unevenfootsteps, until they stop, and Hermann is by Newt’s left. Newt looks up. Hermann sighs and reveals the contents of his hand.

Newt grins. "Busted."

"I'm not 'busted' if I'm admitting it, am I?" Hermann places the carton of cigarettes down on the dock. He systematically removes his shoes and socks. He cuffs the bottom of his jeans in two equivalent folds in a way that Newt’s never witnessed before but finds it incredibly in-line with everything he’s observedabout Hermann. Eerily precise, agonizingly deliberate.

"So..." Newt starts, tugging at his Jurassic Park t-shirt as Hermann makes his way to sit down. "That's what you've been doing? When you go out at night?"

A light blush creeps across Hermann's face. He dips his toes tentatively in the water. "I've tried to be quiet."

"Dude, those cabins are a million years old." He shrugs. “I could hear you come and go.”

Hermann lets out at short scoff and looks out across the water. "I _was_ quitting." he says to the lake. Not defensively, merely stating the facts.

"Hm." Newt leans forward. "When did you start?"

"Some time during secondary school," Hermann says airily. "It was never too regular, just always a response to..." He exhales. "Environmental stressors."

"Oh." Newt kicks a bit of water. The droplets ripple out in perfect concentric circles, warping the reflection of the moon on the lake's surface. "Guess I, uh, haven't really been a great help on the 'environmental stressor' front, huh?"

Hermann turns sharply. "No! It's, er.” The tips of his ears turn pink. “It's not—...not you."

“But it’s not _not_ me either, right?”

Hermann doesn’t respond for a minute after that. The surrounding chorus ofcrickets chirping would be almost comical if Newt didn’t feel like such a piece of shit about it.

Finally Hermann speaks, and Newt realizes he’s been holding his breath during the silence. “I suppose...being in poor standing with Stacker has been part of it.”

“You mean from today?”

“In part.” Cracking open the carton, he pulls up and pushes back one of the remaining three cigarettes. “I just...” He exhales. “He doesn’t care much for me. Not like you.”

“Oh my _God_, that’s what you think?”

Hermann shrugs wordlessly.

“Dude. You’re totally _fine_.” Newt grins. “That’s just kind of the way he is. A lot of tough love.” He softens. “You know we’re not, like, actually in trouble though, right?”

When Hermann gives him a questioning look, Newt continues, “Yeah, like.” He leans back and adjusts his hair—messing it up just in the right way. “I’ve worked here the past four summers. You know how many times I’ve gotten a lecture like that from him?”

Hermann closes the carton and sets it down beside him, not looking Newt as he asks, “Did you deserve it?”

“No!” When Hermann responds with a scoff, Newt continues, “Okay, maybe I’ve slept through breakfast a few times. And gotten myself lost in the woods my first year. Or no, I wasn’t, like..._lost_ lost, I was just checking getting a feel for the area and I _guess_ I was MIA a bit longer than he’d have liked. Shit like that.” He shrugs. “Besides, I think you’ve got it all backwards, he _definitely_ likes you. He’s probably frickin’ relieved that there’s finally a responsible counselor here.” He looks back out at the lake. “Anyway, I think as long as you’re good at your job and don’t endanger anyone, you’re fine.”

“You _are_ good at your job,” Hermann says quietly, still fiddling with the carton. “The students adore you.”

“They like giving me shit, is what they like.” He waves it off. “It’s fine. If they have me to pick on, they’re less likely to bother each other.” He turns to Hermann. “They frickin’ love you, dude. But anyway, I guess we probably could...’avoid conflict in front of the campers,’ or whatever, and keep our mutual hatred on the down low.”

Hermann stiffens. “‘Hatred?’”

“Well, you’ve obviously got some problem with me, but.” Newt pauses. “I’m done trying to figure it out. I’ll leave it-slash-you alone.” Hermann’s hand tenses on the dock. “What?”

“The _problem_ I have with you,” Hermann says, his voice dangerously low. “Is that you never say what you mean.”

Newt stares at him. “Well, you know what your problem is?” His voice takes on a similar biting edge. “You don’t say _anything_.”

“That’s how you justify making fun of me?” Hermann says coldly. “Badgering me?”

“Wh- wait.” Newt pauses. “You thought I was...making _fun_ of you?”

Hermann stares back at him, the cold demeanor replaced by confusion mirroring Newt’s own. “What would you call it?”

“No, I, uh.” Newt stammers out. “It’s like, you’ve got this real mysterious quality—that is not charming, like at _all_, by the way—and I’m just trying to _get_ you.”

Hermann continues to stare. “What...what do you suppose there is to get?”

“I-I don’t know, man, like...” Newt stammers out, immediately regretting this line of conversation. “Okay, like how you insist on waking up at the crack of dawn when you’re clearly not a morning person—like you just are biologically _not_ a morning person. Or your weirdly good taste in synthy electropop. Or your fascination with Pierre de Fermat—it just seems like he was some asshole who didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, what’s the mystery? I literally don’t get it. Or why one day in the second week, you were like, super down to sit with me at breakfast, but by dinner you were effectively telling me to fuck off. _Or_,” he says with extra emphasis. “This apparent smoking habit you’ve been pretty successfully keeping under wraps for the past couple weeks?”

The examples don’t completely ease the tension in the air, but Hermann’s hand relaxes. “You are the most bizarre person I’ve met,” he says, looking down at his feet in the water.

“Well.” Newt likewise looks down at his own feet in the water. “I’m sorry. I am. At least you don’t have to deal with me much longer. And the Boston-Cambridge area is big enough that you’d never run into me.”

Hermann turns his head and studies Newt for a moment before returning his gaze to the lake. “If that’s what you wish.”

“What _I_ wish? I just figured—I mean...” Newt shrugs. “I _was_ kind of an asshole."

A pause. "Perhaps. A bit." Hermann exhales. "And I was, a bit, as well."

"Yeah."

"You _do_ know that I can appreciate biological sciences—" Hermann flinches as a dragonfly skirts past him. "From afar. Academically."

"On behalf of the _biological sciences_,” Newt says, adopting a horrible British accent. “Thank you."

Hermann scoffs and they fall back into silence, one more comfortable, less oppressive. The crickets chirping have tempered down from a sign from the universe to a nice ambient noise. “Your students genuinely like you.” Hermann says quietly. “On astronomy nights they’re always looking at whatever creatures are out at night.” He points out toward the trees with a curt nod of his chin, where a few faint glowing lights float about. “All the _Photinus pyralis_.”

Newt grins. “Guess I taught ‘em well, after all.” He leans back, resting his body weight on his arms. "The campers really do adore you, though. You know that, right?”

A small smile. "You think so?" Hermann dips his foot in the water. "I—“ he starts. “I never went to summer camp, growing up. I didn’t know exactly what...” He trails off, shrugs.

"Yeah, dude! On our last walk they were all like, ‘Do you think we’ll see the Big Dipper?’ Or like, ‘I want to see Scorpius!’ They were psyched.” 

"It's easy when the subject matter is something civilizations have found interesting for centuries." Hermann leans back, lying flat against the dock. "You see that there?" He traces a parallelogram in the sky. "That's Lyra.”

“Huh. I‘m not sure I...” Newt follows Hermann’s lead and lies down.

“_Look_.” Hermann motions his hand again. “Above the fire tower. Can you see it now?”

“Uh. No.” Newt shifts closer. “Where is it?”

Hermann takes Newt's hand by the wrist and traces the shape. "Right. _There_.” 

All at once, the the constellation emerges with a sudden clarity, something so bright and obvious that Newt can’t believe he didn’t see it before.“Oh! Yeah!”

“You’re lying.”

“Oh my God, no! I swear, I see it, I see it.”

Hermann laughs a real, genuine laugh. For a moment, Newt stops breathing. He turns away from the night sky and toward Hermann’s smile, his beaming face lit by the moon and stars. Alerted by Newt’s intense stare, Hermann looks from the stars to Newt to his own hand, still clasped around Newt’s wrist, and recoils, pulling it back. Newt props himself up on his elbow and reaches for Hermann’s withdrawn hand.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes.” The response is so immediate that Hermann looks like he’s surprised himself. Newt lets out a breathy laugh and leans in.

It’s slow and cautious, as though they’re holding something fragile between the two of them. But when Hermann lets out a soft moan and weaves one hand into Newt’s hair, something instinctual kicks in and all Newt knows is that he wants to be on top of him.

The next two seconds happen in slow motion. 

Newt slings his right leg around to straddle Hermann. But his trajectory doesn’t quite reach, his knee just misses the dock, and his expression changes from confident to _Oh, shit_ as gravity pulls him off the dock. Hermann reflexively clasps Newt by the forearm, but Newt’s inertia is so strong that they both inevitably fall into the lake with a loud splash.

Newt comes up first. “Hermann! Shit!” He tosses his glasses—which have miraculously stayed on his face and not sunk into the lake’s abyss— back up onto the dock. Better than pushing his good fortune.

Hermann pops up and splutters. “Newton!” He latches onto the dock with one hand, futilely tries to wipe his face dry with his wet hand.

“Fuck, I’m sorry! Are you alright?”

Pushing the wet hair out of his eyes, Hermann clears his throat. “Er, yes. I think so.”

“Then is it alright if I do—“ Newt swims up to Hermann grabs ahold of the ledge of the dock with one hand and wraps the other around Hermann’s waist. “This?” He pulls Hermann in, closing the gap between their bodies, and this time, Hermann instigates the kiss. He tastes like smoke and peppermint and a bit like the lake. When he places his free hand on Newt’s cheek, Newt thinks he might sink below the surface of the water and never return to land.

Voices emerge from the shore, excited campers and finally one grave voice instructing everyone to go back to their cabins. Newt and Hermann break apart.

“Shit.”

“What are we going to _say_?” Hermann hisses, slightly panicked.

“The truth.” Newt latches his other hand to the dock and pulls himself back up. Once back up, he reaches out a hand.

Hermann rolls his eyes but accepts Newt’s hand. Newt helps him back up. They stand, greeted by the blinding light of Stacker’s flashlight. “You two—“ Stacker starts, exhausted.

“Yeah! It’s us two. I just, uh, fell in.” Slinging an arm around Hermann’s shoulders, Newt speaks too loudly, too cheerfully. He can feel Hermann freeze. “Fortunately, Hermann here was around to help—or attempt to help.” Newt shrugs.“Not successfully, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Stacker shifts his look from Newt, beaming madly, to Hermann, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. “Er, yes.” Hermann mutters. “I suppose so.”

After a moment of study, Stacker sighs. “Just...clean yourselves up, please.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “And try to not have any more accidents like this. We don’t want any of the students to get the idea that they can go swimming at night.” 

“Right. Of _course_. A liability disaster. Won’t happen again!”

When Stacker is halfway back to the cabins, Newt looks up at Hermann.

“That was fun,” Newt says lightly.

“‘_Fun_’?”

“Yeah.” Newt puts his hands back in his pockets. “We should do it again some time.”

Hermann swiftly gives him a peck on the lips. When Newt leans in for more, Hermann lightly holds him back, just with the gentle pressure of his fingertips. “What?” Newt whines.

“You’re soaking wet.”

“So are you, genius.”

“We should shower.”

“Together?”

“_Newton._“ Hermann blushes furiously.

“Just throwing it out there.” Newt steps back to pick up Hermann’s shoes and starts heading back to camp, pulling Hermann gently by the hand. “But no, uh.” He lets out a nervous laugh. “This is great. You’re great. Do you wanna, like, do something. Later?”

“We have tomorrow,” Hermann says gently, stifling a yawn. “The next couple weeks.”

Newt grins. “And even afterward, when we’re both in Boston—“ He backtracks. “Well, not that we _have_ to hang out when you’re settled in at BU, but—“

“No,” Hermann murmurs pressing one more kiss onto the back of Newt’s hand as they walk back together. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> This shouldn't have been so long but thank you for reading !!


End file.
